Clay Clark | Till Death Do Us Part – 7 Principles for Creating a Great Marriage

Audio Transcription

So many different times in my life, I’ve played with broken or hurt things, broken foot, broken leg, broken hand, broken arm, broken sternum, broken collarbone. I could keep going if I just thought more about bones. Why, man? Because I loved it. I loved playing the game. I was passionate about it. One of the reasons I even get encouraged at seeing all of you here, you know why I get encouraged by that is because you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses? five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zulman. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books Z’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the CNC, up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Now we’re here. All right, T-Town and Oklahoma, people listening right now live on the radio and people watching live on Facebook live. My name is Clay Clark I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the year and I am here to help you learn how to start and grow a successful business And teach you how to have a successful life now typically Dr. Robert Zellner joins us on the show, but today he’s off expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire And so I had to ask myself, I had to say, who would be the perfect person to replace Dr. Zellner? I know it’s going to be my wife. Miss Vanessa, how are you? I’m doing great tonight. Great to be here in the Box that Rocks. It’s your first time being in the Box that Rocks. That’s right. My first time in the Box. I must say, it’s got the great ambience, the whole feel. The great mojo. And the music in the background is like a party. Oh yeah, now we brought on a guy, this guy knows how to have a party. This guy knows how to congregate a group of people and coach these people into having a great time. He knows how to, he really knows how to lead a group, a flock of people if you will. It’s Tulsa’s shepherd, it’s Tulsa’s pastor, it’s Pastor Kelly Goins. How you doing sir? Hey, I’m doing great, doing great. Now today we’re talking about your observations. We’re talking today about seven observations for creating a great marriage. Now some of you are listening and you’re going, I thought this was a business show. I thought this was a show about business. This is a show about business and selling stuff. But here’s the thing is, when you have a successful business, but if you come home and you don’t have a successful marriage, that’s no good. And so today we’re talking about how to have a great marriage. You know, you talk about a great business. You want to have a great marriage. If you have a great business and a great marriage, that’s a great life. That’s awesome. And so today we’re talking about specifically how to have a great marriage. Now Pastor Kelly, for the people who are not familiar with you and your ministry, where can they find your church, my friend? We are located at the very awesome corner of 81st and Memorial in Tulsa. We’re on the northeast corner there, right next to the Quick Trip. Oh yeah. It’s a brand new location for us. We’ve been there for about four weeks now and it’s fantastic. We love to have you guys come by and worship with us. I want to brag on the place a little bit. It’s got a beautiful coffee bar there. You have great praise and worship. You have a great ministry team. How many years have you been a pastor? I mean, are you just kind of hacking or have you just kind of started six weeks ago or is this a thing? I’ve actually been in full-time ministry for about 38 years. Wow. I’m not that old but I started young. I’ve been in full-time ministry for about 26, 27 something like that. Wow. And so I’ve been doing ministry all my life. My father is a pastor and my grandfather died at 104 and he was a pastor all of his life too. 104? Yes he pastored his church until he was 100. Was he eating organic? Absolutely not. Fried food all the way. He was going back to physical time. He was pushing through. He was looking for the 370 years. Everything was organic back then. That’s right. Wow. Okay, now here’s the deal. Now we’re talking about, again, the seven observations for creating a great marriage. Yep. And have you had the opportunity over the years to counsel couples in marriage? Oh, sure. And when you’re counseling couples in marriage, you’ve probably seen the same predictable pitfalls maybe over and over. Yep. A lot of times that’s the truth. Now let’s get into this observation number one. Understand the difference between desires versus expectations. I’m going to ask you, what do you mean by that? This is the big one. And for those of you who are listening by radio, you can’t see this, but I actually brought visual aids. I usually do this with my wife and so she helps me. But here’s the thing, whenever we decided to get married we had these desires that we thought we would have in a marriage. We had things like new cars and a nice house and all this kind of stuff. And so I brought a box here that is the difference between what I thought marriage was and what marriage actually ended up being. Is this going to be a positive visual aid? Is this going to be a negative? No, it’s going to be both. I got to do a positive and a negative here. Now, I’m going to describe what you’re pulling out here, but on Facebook Live, you can see it. Now, Vanessa, can you kind of describe what you’re seeing here as he unveils it? All right. Well, I’ll start with my wife. When my wife got married to me, she expected… Here we go. He’s reaching into the box. He’s looking around. Oh, like a Tiffany’s box coming out. She expected these Tiffany gifts and these Tiffany blue things. I mean, she expected life to be like that. Nice, nice. Actually, it turned out. You know, a couple of Tiffany boxes, I’ve got to say. Not just one, but a couple. Large boxes, too. Large purchases. A larger one and a smaller one. It turned out a little bit more like this. A toaster. A toaster? I actually made the mistake of buying her a toaster for Christmas one year. A little confession here. My first year, I was married to Vanessa. Vanessa, what did I buy you? Do you remember what I bought you? Every cent of lotion from Victoria’s Secret because he couldn’t decide on one, so I probably wanted them all. And remember I bought you all those utilitarian appliances. Yes, yes. I appreciate the effort, but for me, we didn’t have a lot of money. I’m thinking, wait, he bought every kind. I could just keep one and return all these. This is the face. This is what she says. She goes, thank you so much. Do you have the gift, Christine? I remember going, oh, I worked so hard. I went there into Victoria’s Secret, into the belly of the beast. Into the lotion section. Into the lotion section. Well, the important part is it was Victoria’s Secret. It didn’t matter what came from it, just because it was Victoria’s Secret. I didn’t make eye contact with anybody. It was very stressful. I know. I can’t even. I can’t even. I can’t even. It didn’t matter what came from it just because it was a notorious. I make eye contact with anybody I know it was very stressful in there. No, you can’t go in the place back to your visual. I’m sorry about that Well, and that’s the way it is I I went out to lunch today and took my son-in-law with me and and he made the confession. He just got married in July cuz you’re so yeah to my daughter. Yeah, and he made the confession that he doesn’t have anything for Christmas for her Oh, I am. I am. And I said to him, listen, and for all of you young newlywed guys out there, you got to hear this. Never buy your wife anything that plugs in or that has a motor. OK? Oh, wow. It needs to have chocolate on it, leather conditioner or jewelry cleaner and you’re OK. You know, it has to have those kind of things. No practical value at all. No, no. It’s got to be fun things. So that’s the way that was. But she expected Tiffany Blue. I gave her a toaster. Here’s another thing she expected. The beach? She’s got a really nice beach towel here, guys. It’s got aquamarine, turquoise. She loves the beach. And she expected for us to go to the beach all the time. And instead she got, here we go, he’s reached into the box. Camouflage. Hunting, maybe. I’m not sure. Well, we go to Colorado on vacations. She hasn’t gotten used to that yet. So we like going to the mountains where it’s cold and that kind of stuff. Do you cover yourself in deer pee to go out there and chase the deer? Well, that was the other thing. I wasn’t going to bring that. But she expected perfume. And I’ve got more deer urine in my house than I do perfume. For those of you who don’t know what we’re talking about, if you’re an avid hunter, I grew up in rural Minnesota. You cover yourself in deer urine and it attracts the deer because apparently deer love deer urine. Well, you don’t really cover yourself in it, but you do sprinkle it around. Sprinkle it around. You spill a little bit too much. You anoint yourself in deer urine. I’ve got a confession. Oh yeah, what is that? I’ve actually got a deer head in the trunk of my pickup right now. What? Yeah, it was kind of a long story. A real head? A real head. Should I go get it? Have you taxed or donated? No. Yes, I have. We processed it. I donated it all to the fire department. My wife is crying. I’m sorry. Weeping over it. We can’t tell how many of them are alive. This was a bad deer we had to get rid of. Okay, we digress. So back to your visual here. So that was her ideas of what expectations were and what reality was. Well, here was my expectations. I had a little bit more of an expectation of these kind of things. Okay, here we go. He’s going in. He’s going to the box. He’s looking at the box. A lot of colors. A lot of… Colorful material. I had domestic stuff like an apron here, a kitchen apron. So, are you thinking she was going to be cooking or you were going to be cooking? No, she was going to be cooking. I figured that I was going to come home to meals and great food. I want a woman who will cook all the time. Yeah, yeah. An apron. Instead, I got… Ramen noodles. Ramen noodles. That was the staple of our house when we were growing up. My wife doesn’t like to cook. So the first year of our life, though, I knew she worshipped me because she brought a burnt offering and put it on the table in front of me every night. Your wife doesn’t like to cook? No. She doesn’t. What do you think about that? I don’t like to cook. It’s overwhelming. I would just do a smoothie every night if I could. So much easier. Her cooking got better when she figured out that the smoke alarms weren’t timers. I feel like I’m a good cook, I just really don’t enjoy the process. I understand. Well, it was, you know, that’s the way that goes. And she really is. One time she asked me to take her out and I said, well, where do you want to go? She said, let’s go somewhere I haven’t been in a long time. I took her to the kitchen. Oh, see, just, all right. Wow. Wow. This guy. I wanted to ask you, sorry, what I think you’re saying here is we have all these desires and they become expectations and I feel like this is a huge thing that Grothy, I think it was David Grothy, we went to a premarital counseling and this is why I’d encourage every couple has got to go into premarital counseling. It was huge. He went over basically what you did right here. What are your expectations, Clay, for marriage? Vanessa, what are your expectations? And we had to sit there and see where we were apart and come together. And premarital counseling is huge because you can work through all these things before. And I’m sure you do that with couples, correct? Right. Yeah. We have a whole program that we’ll take couples through and talk to them about what are their expectations and realities in marriage and what do you look forward to and just what those realities are because it’s important for them to know about that before they ever get into those. All right. Now here’s the deal. My job is to make this knowledge actionable, okay? And to give you some really positive facts. So we have a fun factoid. This just in from the American Psychological Association. The fun people over there. The fun police at the American Psychological Association. They said that 40-50% of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher. So on marriage number two, it’s not so good. So that’s not really a fun fact at all But the actionable knowledge here is if you’re if you’re talking to your wife and you’re going If you’re talking to your husband and you’re going we just aren’t on the same page What I encourage you to do tonight is you want to take your your super attractive spouse? You want to take them out to what’s the restaurant bird? What’s the restaurant? I like Rousseau’s you take them out to Rousseau And what you’re gonna do get them and get them to give us a tomato basil get them their favorite entree or soup. Go out there and go ahead and make a list of what your expectations are versus where you’re at right now versus the expectations versus what’s actually happening, your desires versus expectations. Go ahead and do it. It’s a healthy exercise. When we come back, we’re going to talk about observation number two. Do you want to know what observation number two is? I’d love to tell you, but I can’t tell you until after you come back, because we have these great advertisers and we want you to listen to their sensational commercials. When we come back, we’re going to talk about observation number two to take your marriage out of the toilet. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show. You see, many of you are just discovering this. You see, you’re in the middle of the day, you’re going, what is this? This isn’t political. They’re not talking about Mrs. Clinton. They’re not talking about Mr. Trump. They’re not talking about illegal aliens. They’re not talking about deportation. They’re not talking about health care. These guys are talking about how to make a better life. What is this show? I don’t know if I like something so positive and so actionable. I’d rather just learn about generic political things that irritate me that I cannot solve. That’s what I want to hear. Well, if that’s you, you need to listen to the other guys. But in the meantime, you have found the Thrive Time Show during your afternoon at your dojo of mojo. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. Typically I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zellner, but he’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire today. And so I brought on the co-host with the mo-host, my incredible, beautiful wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. Mrs. Vanessa, how are you? I’m excited to be here in the box at Rocks and hanging out with Pastor Kelly. We brought in Pastor Kelly. Now just for anybody who doesn’t know who Pastor Kelly is, he pastors a flock. He’s a shepherd of a great group of people here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They are the Faith Church Congregation. Pastor Kelly, where is that place located, my friend? 81st and Memorial, a brand new location for us. So we’ve been there for about a month now, and we’re on the northeast corner right next to Quick Trip. What’s that website if people want to learn more about your church? TulsaFaith.com. And why should somebody check out your church? I mean, you know, someone’s going, I don’t know. I mean, I’m going to be at that Quick Trip anyway. I’m going to get some taquitos. You know, why should I mosey on over there? Well, we’ve got great coffee. We’ve got great worship. We’ve got great loving people. And I think it’s a place that you will find yourself at home and you’ll learn about the Word of God. And today we are talking about the seven observations for creating a great marriage. You’ve been in the ministry for years and we want to help all the Thrivers, all the 1170 listeners have a great marriage. So observation number two is your desires become expectations. I’m going to go ahead and ask you, what do you mean by that, my friend? Well, somewhere between the limo ride to the airport on vacation and the reality of your life and your marriage kind of collide and you hit that understanding that it’s not going to be like you thought it was going to be. Now you have these expectations. First they were desires. You wanted your wife to be a certain way. You wanted your husband to be a certain way. And now that you’re married and you’ve gotten back, you expect them to perform and be the person that you want them to be. What happens is that in this process it is very self-centered. It’s not us-centered. It’s very centered on what I want and what I need. So it’s that reality when our desires and reality actually collide and expectations collide. So let me ask you this, Vanessa. As a married woman, you’ve been around a lot of married people. You’ve been in the Tulsa community for a long time. What thoughts do you have or what questions would you have for Pastor Kelly about what does he mean by your desires becoming expectations? Well, I think he’s exactly right. We all have, for every marriage it’s going to be different, and for each spouse it’s going to be different about what their expectations are for their spouse to meet certain needs. But I think that really it comes down to how do you solve that problem. I think if you can as adults maturely sit down and say, as a team where are we wanting to go together and what are we needing from each other? As a woman I would say, okay, I have these emotional needs. My husband not so much and that’s fine. And so I need to know, okay, well for him these are the things that are important to him and he is satisfied as long as these things, you know, he has these things and I… I want to watch all the Patriots games. That’s all I’m saying. I want to watch all the games. And for him to understand what my needs are, then I think that you can move forward and you can be fulfilled and you can say, you know, obviously things are going to come up and you bring up, hey, this is an issue or this is something that I realize not having to do with you, but this is a need I have and this would be helpful to me if maybe we could meet it in this way, but I think always focusing on not on the other person about what they’re doing wrong, because they’re not. They’re being themselves. But looking in yourself and saying, this is a need I have. Can we sit together and figure out a way I can better meet your needs and you can meet mine? For somebody who’s listening, Pastor Kelly, he goes, okay, okay. I’m listening and I’m realizing, oh no, my desires have become expectations and those expectations are not being met and I don’t know what to do. What advice would you have for the listeners out there? I think exactly what Vanessa is saying is really important. You sit down even before you are married and you write down what your expectations are, what you want out of a marriage, what you think the marriage is going to fulfill for you, what your needs are, what your spouse’s needs are going to be. Possibly you may realize you guys don’t even want the same thing, in which case you just say, you know what, I’m glad we found this out now and not after the marriage. You don’t like the Patriots? I don’t understand. In almost every marriage, in almost every wedding that I perform, and I always do this on my own, but I always go to the groom before, like minutes before, and I say to him, my keys are in my pocket. If you want to leave, go. And I will make whatever excuse for you because I would rather you bug out now than once you get married. I married a couple one time and six months later, six months later they divorced and actually after about three weeks they split apart and it just wasn’t what they thought it would be. They thought it would be getting up in the morning and having breakfast together out on the patio and romancing. And they probably never sat and had these deep conversations. Which is the whole thing. I have a little rant I want to go on. I’d like to go on a rant and then you guys can pull me back. Here’s the deal. I believe that men, men, and men, you’re listening right now and you’re going, this is not me. I’m not, I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not that kind of man, bear, pig. I would not do that. This is what I think. I think guys, we look around and we go, she is hot. Oh yes, she is hot. And then we begin, once we lock in and go radar lock, she’s hot. What we do is no matter what she does henceforth we justify all we’re like but it doesn’t matter because she is so hot and that’s what guys do they’re like it they’re infatuated I don’t think they’re actually in love. I think love is a decision. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ll let you two just kind of destroy me and say you’re wrong you’re wrong but I believe that marriage is love is more of a decision and a commitment and not a feeling, but it’s more of a commitment. I believe that infatuation is the current situation that most men are in before they get married. That’s why I think engagement is such a big thing. Well, I think for women too. I think they’re infatuated. Anyone, once you get into a relationship with someone, then you’re going to have to make the ongoing choice. I think courtship is so huge though. Like dating someone for being engaged for nine months or six months. Our society wants to tell us that we have to try it out before we marry it. The thing is that more young couples now, especially millennials, are living together and they’re not getting married. But here’s the thing, you don’t even have to approach that on a biblical standpoint, which the Bible does, but you can just base that upon a statistical standpoint that there is a large percentage of those people who never stay together because they’re trying things out and they think we gotta try it out. And eventually you’re always gonna come to a fork in the road or a disagreement and you’re gonna have to say, are we gonna work through this? And there’s no commitment. Yeah, and so they’re gonna. So it’s easier just to bail out. And we have kids with each other, we live together, and then when something goes wrong, one person leaves and then we have a single mom at home wondering where it all went wrong. The thing is is that you have to, have to, have to make that commitment and that commitment is a ring that you put on the fourth finger of the left hand. It’s a tourniquet to stop circulation. I also really think that a commitment is not only, I’m going to stay married no matter what. No matter what! It is a commitment to make your marriage the best marriage. So many people, I’m going to use this program as an example, are spending time and money and thoughts on growing their business and that is wonderful. But they have to know the same principles apply to anything. You’re either growing closer together or further apart. You can never be stagnant. I’m going to let you hop off here. Alright, Dr. Laura. Here we go. We got her worked up here at Thrive. She’s just starting to get into that zone. Now as we come back, we’re going to be talking about observation number three. The conqueror marriage. What are we talking about? The conqueror of marriage? Stay tuned and find out. Thrivetime Show. All right, 1170, welcome back to the Thrivetime Show. During your afternoon, my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, but more importantly, I’m the father of five human kids. And I am honored to be on the show today with you because we are talking about how to grow a successful business. See, every day on this show, we talk about how to grow a successful business And our shows known for providing you that business school without the BS, but yes When you go out there have a successful business you want to come home to a successful life And it’s a successful family and so today we’re talking about how to grow a successful Marriage and specifically we are talking about the seven observations for creating a great marriage. And so to bring some fair and balanced observations to this program, we decided to bring on my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. How are you? I’m doing great. I was kind of fired up there with Kelly before the break. Oh, yeah. We’re bringing on Pastor Kelly Goins. He is the pastor of Faith Church. It’s a growing church in South Tulsa. Pastor Kelly, where can we find out more about your thriving, your growing church? Well, we are on the web, TulsaFaith.com. You can look at us there on Facebook, Instagram, those kind of things. Or just drive by. We get a big sign on the top of our building that says, don’t just drive by faith, or don’t just walk by faith. Don’t walk by faith. Stop in and say hi. So stop in and say hi. Sunday mornings, 1030. Now you’ve been counseling couples for years. You’ve been helping people have successful marriages, and you’ve seen some probably pretty predictable pitfalls. We’re talking today about the seven observations for creating a great marriage. We’re on to observation number three, which is really kind of a pitfall. This is this thing you call the conqueror marriage. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. Educate me. Well, when we come to that point in our relationship where our expectations and our realities kind of collide together, we have options of how we go. These next three are three different directions that people will go, and they’re kind of negative directions so I want to point them out. The first one is a conqueror marriage. It’s when you have conquered it. You have finally let her know exactly what she should be and what you expect. Or he has let you know exactly what he wants in a marriage. And you’ve conquered it. You’ve won the battle and you’ve let her know, you’ve set her straight, and now everything is going to be your way, the way you want it to be. What about when she sets you straight? She has said, you’re going to start to decorate this house with doe skin paint, and you’re going to wear a matching sweater. We’re going to do a family photo session, and you need to wear a matching sweater, and your son’s going to wear the sweater, and we’re all going to wear the same jeans together. What happens when that happens? What happens when that happens? Think of those families. We all know those families. We all know those families who the wife is in charge and she’s conquered it and she’s got them all under submission. The thing is, is that it’s really easy for me to be me, but it’s not easy for her to be me and it’s not easy for me to be her. We have to be who we are. I can’t make everybody else be the way I want them to be. I have to give and take. And so this conquer marriage never works because even though I win the battle, I’ve lost the war because I’m losing my marriage. I think this is so huge because you have to let each of each other truly be themselves. I have an example for this. Years ago… I’m sorry, Flyers. No, no, no, this is great. Here we go. No, listen, this is me. Years ago, my husband was working with a business and he took our kids around an old neighborhood that we… This is why we don’t live in neighborhoods anymore. And he was passing out flyers, not disturbing anyone, on everyone’s door sign. Well, I guess some of the neighbors, one in particular, did not like us because we had a brown van without a door and it was kind of ugly. And so there was maybe some hard feelings there. Real quick, I just want to make it clear with the divers. I had sold a business and we were doing very, very well. And I had a brown van for nostalgic reasons. And one of our employees ripped the door off the van. And I wanted to keep the A-team. It was like the A-team. It was just random stuff. Just anything random. It was hot. It was a van without a door. And so people were upset about me. But by the way, that’s kind of a little context. That’s the round-in. But anyway, so people did not like that. So maybe they did not like us. So, the next day after passing out these flyers, suddenly there is a no soliciting sign in our neighborhood. And we’re the first house that comes in. My husband comes home, that’s not right, they can’t do that, there can’t be a sign. And I don’t even know what I do with those because I’m realizing I’m on a radio show. You can share the whole thing. So that night my husband disappears for a while and then he comes into bed and he’s like, it’s gone. It’s gone. I’m like, what’s gone? He’s like, the sign. I’m like, what? He’s like, yeah, I took down the sign. You took down the sign? Why did you take down the sign? I don’t have to have that sign. Where’s the sign? It’s in the river. So suddenly I’m getting stressed. I’m like, no confrontation. And I’m thinking, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, they’re going to come tomorrow and they’re going to come to me and they’re going to ask where the sign is. And I can’t lie, I’m going to have to say, my husband threw it in the river. So long story short, he, out of the goodness of his heart and maybe some tears for me, he got that sign and he put it back. But this is something I never realized until years later. I was infringing on a little part of the clay that had to be himself. He had to be able to take that sign and I had to just be able to not say anything about it. But you know what? There are also parts of Vanessa that have to be able to say, you know what? This really bothers me or I have a problem with this. And so it’s getting to your authentic self and being able to be that yourself and let your spouse be that. And if you can’t do that, you don’t have a legit marriage. You’re not going to, I don’t know how long you’ll be able to fake it. Pastor Kelly, you have something on the other. Let me just, I love what Vanessa said, and that’s very true because a lot of families go through this. But the problem is, is that when you’ve conquered everything, the problem is, is that intimacy leaves because you’re not letting the other person be themselves. You’re in control. Yeah. And now intimacy and love becomes a duty because I’m doing what I am told. And that’s not what marriage is all about. And so that’s what I’m saying. I think there’s such intimacy when you can truly let the person be themselves. You can hear the things they have to say. They can be validated. And that is having a true relationship. But the rest, yeah. Now, speaking of intimacy, I’m going to tell you what. It is ecstasy when Pastor Kelly is next to me. And Thrivers, I’m telling you what, if you’re on Facebook Live, you want to see we three. I’m just telling you. It is just audio. When you look at it, he’s one of Tulsa’s most beautiful men. He’s a pastor of a growing church. You’ve got to go on Facebook Live and check, check, check it out. My name is Clay Clark, former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, and you are here on The Thrive Time Show, your daily dojo of mojo. We come back. We’re going to get into the next pitfall, and trust me, you want to know about this. All right, Thrive Nation, green country and Oklahoma, welcome back to The Thrive Time Show. For many of you, this is lunchtime. This is the time that you’re going to get some lunch. And you know where I get lunch when I can go out for lunch? And I’ve got to be honest with you, I never go out for lunch. When I go out for lunch, it’s about 7pm on the way home, or 6pm or whatever time it is. But I go to Oklahoma Joe’s. You know why I go there? One, they’re a sponsor. That’s why I go there. No, but two, seriously, seriously, the baked beans, they have won awards for having Oklahoma’s best baked beans. In fact, the world’s best baked beans. He does bring these home all the time, especially to my son Aubrey, where they run out and grab them. Anytime we have anyone in town visiting, grabs those beans. I’m going to tell you what, this is a guarantee I have for you. I call this the Oklahoma Joe’s Baked Bean Challenge. So here’s the challenge. You go over to any Oklahoma Joe’s location, there’s three that I know about, and there’s a mobile location. I’m sure it would be kind of expensive. I’m sure you could rent the mobile version to come to your house. But the thing is, you go to any of those three locations, go to Oklahoma Joe’s, go get those baked beans, and just test them. Try them. And I’ll tell you what, if they are the world’s best baked beans, you just come here to the Thrive15.com world headquarters on the left coast of the Arkansas River in beautiful Jinx, America, and you come to our Thrive15.com world headquarters, and I will give you not only a high five, but I will give you a free copy of my newest book, Thrive. Now, if they are not the best baked beans, you come to my office, I will call you a liar, and then I will give you a free copy of my new book, Thrive. I’m just telling you that they’re the best baked beans. You’ve got to do it. I promise you, I’m committing right now to Tulsa for a limited time. If you do it today, I’m going to take care of you. Just today. Now you’re going, today I’ve got to alter my life to get a book? It doesn’t make any sense. Oh, it will make sense when you and I have had a high five or I’ve called you a liar. Either way, it’s going to be a great form of personal communication. We’re going to really build a great relationship. And speaking of great relationships, today on the show we are talking about how to create a great marriage, and specifically seven observations for creating a great marriage. And so we’re moving on here to observation number four. And so Pastor Kelly Goins, talk to us about observation number four, the compromise marriage. Well this is another pitfall of marriages, and it’s the compromise marriage. It’s when I divvy out and decide, you know, I’m going to do my thing and you do your thing. The man decides he’s going to go out on Friday night. She decides she’s going to go out on Saturday night. And again, we’ve been talking about these marriages and trying to get out of I marriages and trying to get into a marriage that is together, a we marriage. And this is a pitfall of that. I can tell you, you know a sign that you are in a compromised marriage? You know a sign, a telltale sign? What? Yeah, go. Well, I mean, you’ve been a marriage counselor for years, so I’m going to just tell you what I’ve seen. Okay. If a man gets a customized bowling ball with his name on it, you know, if your husband says, I want a bowling ball with my name on it, and a rose in the middle of it, and then a shirt beneath it, if your husband’s running around with an embroidered bowling shirt, or you look at his credit cards, you’re like, what is he up to? What’s he doing? Is he sneaking around? If he has signed up for some kind of bowling membership or some kind of league, you know that he’s beginning to compromise and say, you know what? I’m going to live my own life. I’ve decided to just throw it all away, and I’m just going to eat cheese fries and drink beer and join a bowling league. And that’s how you know things have really hit the bottom. Ms. Vanessa, back to you. So I think this comes back to, for me anyways, there’s just the principle that you can apply to business, to fitness, to relationships. You know, you’re either getting better or worse. So these two people are either deciding and you’ve got to make a conscious decision and effort to grow together or by default you’re growing apart. There’s no being stagnant. And so when you’re both going two separate directions doing two separate things, this is why I think it’s so huge if you are someone a couple who has a business especially a startup that’s going to be take so much time to Incorporate it into your entire family’s life because you can’t have be going two separate directions And it won’t work and you guys do a great job of that I mean I come up here and I see your kids effort We both have decided to make. I see your kids working and I see the whole family involved in this and you know the people that Clay hangs out with and vice versa. There’s no one that I hang out with that she does not know. This is true. That’s true. Yeah, it is. I will say this because I mean this. There are moves that we do. My wife and I do these moves and we probably tonight we could learn something from you. So I’m excited for you to continue to educate us. But there are some things, there’s three things that we do constantly that I encourage everybody else to do. One is that we’re very intentional about really not spending time with somebody of the opposite sex in a closed door format. Because when it comes to that, you’re always growing closer together or further apart. Are there occasional opportunities where those things could happen? Yeah, but you’ve got to be intentional to just go, that’s not our normal. We don’t do that. The second thing is we really try to bring our kids into the business. So our kids actually do the… we have five kids. We homeschool them all. When I say we, mainly she. But she homeschools all five. Well, shout out to Miss Tristie. She has huge nipples. Yeah, and Miss Tristie Fryer. Big shout out to you. We brought on Miss Tristie Fryer. She’s a great lady. But we have the five kids and so they’re up here doing the cleaning in the office. I’m teaching my son entrepreneurship and landscaping. Slave labor is what it is. Yes, slave labor. They make some big bucks. The third thing is we really, really do talk about the business around the kids. We involve the kids. They come up here on the weekends. They help us. It’s really a family thing. I would just encourage if you’re listening right now and you do own a business, and according to Forbes, 57% of you listening right now want to start a business at some point, make sure that you try to be intentional about putting rocks, I repeat, rocks in your schedule if you take rocks and you put them in a cup and then you fill that cup with with With sand right the rocks still fit in that cup But he put they put in the sand first the rocks don’t fit so put the rocks of scheduling time for your significant other Into your schedule and your family now pastor Kelly What are their kind of warnings or or I guess advice would you have for people as relates to the compromised marriage there? Well, again, we have this concept of me divvying out my time and bargaining with my spouse that she gets to do things and I get to do things. And again, these are two separate lives. And what we’re talking about here is bringing these lives back together because as long as I’m more concerned with my rights and what I get out of the marriage and what I want and her doing what I want to do. I’m not spending the time listening to what she needs and taking care of her needs. This is still what we would call an I marriage. It’s an I-centered marriage and I-centered marriages never work. They always fall apart. They never work. You’ve been, you know, how many years have you been in ministry, my friend? I’ve been in ministry for about 38 years. Well, not full time, but in ministry full time for about 28, about 27. You’ve seen, I mean, according to all the statistics, about half the marriages end in divorce. It doesn’t matter what statistic you look at. You can read the Huffington Post or you can look at the American Psychological Association or you can get into these different studies. But if you could say to the people listening right now, hey, put the brakes on and do this. If you could tell somebody one action step as it relates to this compromised marriage kind of warning here, what action step would you give him? Well, I’m not going to jump all the way off this because we’re going to share that here in another segment coming in front. But what I’m saying, one of the greatest things you can do is start spending time together. I mean, you know, we’ve been talking about this and I always think of Bible, biblical connections, but there’s a verse in the Bible that says, what is it? What is it? Profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul. And I’ve kind of adapted that to say, what is a profit man if he gains the whole world, has the greatest business in the world and is a millionaire, but he loses his own family? There has to be that connection and part of that is setting those priorities. I know for my life, and I think it’s a biblical order that we can do, is to set priorities. God is number one, my family is second, my wife is second, my personal development is third, and then my work is fourth, and then my church attendance is fifth. And I think that you have to keep that priority list going. You know, I’ve heard this example before, and I’m going to share it on the store show, is that oftentimes men view marriage like if it’s a house, that it’s one bedroom in the house. And they have all these other bedrooms they go to during the day. They go to their office, do their work. They might go to do a workout somewhere. They might have their friends, and then they come home to the room that is their wife. And where a wife views a marriage as like the whole house, it’s all integrated. So she’s going to come home and tell you about the friend she works out with, or she’s going to want to know about your friend she works out with, she’s going to want to know about your job. And I think as a woman, I think we’re all made so completely different, men and female. Women just want to be included. They want to feel like they’re not this thing off to the side, but they want to know that they’re integrated in your whole life because they’re going to integrate you in their whole life. And so that’s why I think it’s so awesome, like Clay is saying, we’ve had to be intentional. Hey, we have kids. We want to have them be a part of the business. How can we do that? Because business is such a big part of our life. Hey, we grew the beginning together, but how can we continue that? And it’s a conscious decision that it’s going to be different for everyone in how they incorporate and do those things. Sure. Two things I always make sure I say to my wife every day, and the first one before I leave, I tell her she looks wonderful. She looks beautiful because I have seen that. I know she’s hot. I mean, I always, I outpunted my coverage on that. She’s a lot prettier than what I should have gotten. But here’s the thing. If I don’t tell her that someone else will, she’s going to listen to it. And the other thing is when I come home at night, I say, how was your day? Because again, I want to meet that need in my wife and I don’t want other people meeting it. Those are my two questions I always give to my wife. I don’t mean to one-up you, but then after I do that, I go and get my wife a dozen roses. I typically will give her a bubble bath, the finest of the items. Where’s the Tiffany box? And then after that, I tend to give her a Tiffany gift. These are just everyday. These are just things that I do everyday. No, but Thriver, seriously, if you’re listening right now, who has a perfect marriage? Nobody. But I’m going to tell you this. We want you to have a successful life. We’re here to help you. We’re here to help mentor you and really to answer your questions. We’ve had so many people email info at thrive15.com asking, how can I improve my marriage and my business? And so that’s what today’s show is all about. Now, we come back. We’re going to get into this next pitfall, which Pastor Cohen has seen for years. Stay tuned. It’s the Rivetime Show. All right, 1170 listeners, the smartest people on the planet. You could be listening to anything right now. You could be listening to a little Justin Bieber. Nothing wrong with that. But you could be listening to a little Taylor Swift. Nothing wrong with that. You could be listening to political news right now. You could be getting super frustrated with just the status of the economy or the recount or all that. But you know what you’re doing right now? You’re choosing to invest in a self-help program. So you’re trying to invest in yourself. You’re trying to be the best self that you can be so you can take a great selfie, didn’t I? Get out your phone, take a picture of yourself because you’re the best self you can be. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. And my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. And here today I have two very special guests on the show today. Dr. Robert Zellner today. He’s a doctor. He’s an optometrist turned tycoon. And you know, he’s out expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire while I’m holding down the Alamo here. Today he was within the glass box that rocks here at the Thrive15.com World Headquarters. And so I brought on two great guests today. I brought on my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. How are you? I’m doing great. Doing great. And I brought on Pastor Kelly Goins. How are you, sir? I’m doing great. Now a lot of people, I think they’re hearing you, they’re going, I think I know that name. I think I’ve heard of that church. Where is your church, my friend? Faith Church is on the corner of 81st and Memorial. We’re on the northeast corner right next to Quick Trip. And it’s a new campus for us. And everything’s going great. It’s a great location, great place. Now we’re talking today about how to have a great marriage and specifically seven observations for creating a great marriage. Now for people who are wanting to have a great marriage, that’s not me. I don’t want to have a great marriage. I like it the way it is. Well if you want to have a great marriage or you want to have a great family or you’re looking for a great church, why should people come out and check out your church for the first time? Well, there’s a lot of great people there and we can help you learn principles from the Word of God Every service we have a great time of prayer and ever I don’t think we’ve ever done a service there that we don’t use the Bible as some sort of reference So it’s a great place you get a great cup of coffee great music great people great pastor It’s just great man. You are you you look beautiful, too It’s a place for a beautiful pastor in a great church now. We’re talking about principle number five, this is observation number five, which is the debt and debtor marriage. What are you talking about, Pastor? Well, we’ve talked about here the I marriage, and we’ve just talked about how marriage can be centered upon what we want and what our expectations are and what our demands are. And this is kind of the third pitfall in that, and it is what we would call a debtor marriage and that is just when I come to that understanding that that I convinced my wife that she owes me you know you’re supposed to do this you’re supposed to be my provider you’re supposed to clean the house you’re supposed to be the one who does the laundry yeah you’re supposed to take care of money I go to work all day I work hard all day I just want someone to be kind and nice and sweet to me and maybe even a romantic I mean, you owe me. That’s the key phrase there. You owe me. He’s a pastor. He’s a pastor, so he can’t say what I want to say. But I’m going to emphasize the romantic part. I’m just going to say that men, you’re listening to the show and you’re going, all I’m looking for is nonstop romance. That’s all I’m asking for is intimacy. Maybe sex? No, see that’s the thing. The girls are looking for the romance, right? I am using code words. Those are different things. I am using code words because I am a man. This is a family show and I am using clean words. You are over there being dirty. I am all about that. People on Facebook Live, she is over there in that dirty section. So anyway, let’s talk about this. Vanessa, I want to have you unpack this. So this debt, debtor marriage, where are people getting it wrong? What have you learned through 15 years of marriage? Talk to us. Well, the good news is I don’t think that we have done that, which is good. I’m very, very thankful. You’ve never been like, hey, I do this. But what I’m saying, the principle is you would never be able to fulfill that debt because there’s always going to be… The thing is, I remember before I married Clay, I remember your mom asked me, why do you want to marry Clay? And she would tell me, this makes me feel good, this is a win for Vanessa. We have all wondered that though. I told her, I said, I want to make him have the best life possible. And she looked at me and she goes, okay, like I’d like you to marry myself. But this is the thing. So it should be about how can I please that other person? What can I do to serve that other person. And I know in our marriage it hasn’t been the stereotypical of maybe how because it’s you know maybe I was serving by writing checks to DJs for 3 in the morning until he came back but I was like that’s what he’s asking me to do. So maybe we didn’t have the typical but it worked for us. So but it was never like well I did that so now you need to do this but if we did it wouldn’t either way there you could never fulfill the debts either way because you know why? When you are looking at a debt, you’re looking at your own side. You’re never looking at the other person’s side. I tell you, especially in our society today, when we look around, when we watch television, you know the things our kids watch and just kind of the programs that we watch on television, they’re all against that. I mean, it is, what can you do for me? You know, the Janet Jackson song, what have you done for me lately? What have you done for me lately? That’s kind of the concept that we have in life and in marriage. You have to perform for me. And I think that if a husband and wife, a couple, is constantly thinking, what can I do to serve the other person, it makes it cyclical so the other person automatically wants to serve back. But the problem, the only thing I can see it tripping up is if someone becomes so eye focused that you have to… You know when you get to the last one, you’ve got to involve Jesus. Sure. I want to brag on myself here, because I am not awesome. But everyone’s swell, I do swing, and I do hit the bowl. But my kids and I, we go to the mall. We’re out there in the mall, we’re doing mall stuff. And it’s a deal where you go to the mall, and Vanessa says, We’re going to do family photos. We’re going to do family photos. My wife, she goes, babe, you can wear whatever you want for family photos. And I’m like, what? I don’t have to wear that stupid sweater that every man in America has to wear the same sweater his wife wears. But you never had to make the website. There was one year and my mom brought you a sweater. I wanted to shoot myself, but I didn’t have a weapon. I was afraid of death. I was not a fan of it. But I’m saying, Vanessa lets me wear what I want. I said wear a jersey, wear a sweatsuit, whatever you feel comfortable in. Just please be at the picture. So then I went out there to Godiva and I got her some dark chocolate with the almonds. Almond bark. That’s right. And so I did that. And I will tell you, I don’t want to give away all my secrets, but there were some other gifts that I purchased and they might or might not have been for herself, not so much myself. So the thing is, she started the catalyst. She started, she’s the one who started the positive mojo. She’s the one who said, you get to wear what you want, which is a guy in a family photo that’s like, am I in heaven? This is so good. And then I was like, I’ve got to outdo her. And it became a positive thing. So she started the catalyst. I tried to over deliver. And that is why things are going great right now. One more time. I think that always comes back to, again, you’ve got to recognize as a person who you are married to and let them fully be themselves. You know, like I said, the first year that we did a family photo, this was years ago before we had any kids, and I said my mom brought the sweater and asked Clay to wear it. It was terrible. Again, it injured his soul, right? He has to be able to be freely who he is as a person, but at the same time, I have to be able to be free. You know what? This is important for me to have photos. So wear whatever the heck you want. I do not care. Do you have a good looking photo or a big smile? They turned out awesome. Even what he was wearing, he went above and beyond. Can I tell them? Yeah sure. Okay so the kids were so cute they got back and they said I expected him just to wear a jersey and sweats or to be show up in a suit. I did not know. And the kids go mom dad went to he was so excited he went to Walmart and bought a $9.98 Navy sweatshirt. $9.98 I love those. Embroidered go-pats on it. Do your job. And it just happened to match everything we’re wearing right. And this is what he did. He never does this. And Havana whispered to me, she goes, and he bought jeans for himself at the mall. Oh! I never wear jeans. He never wears jeans. I’ve never seen your jeans. She goes, he did that for you, mom. And I was like, oh my gosh, he didn’t have to do that. Big smile. And he never said anything to me about it, but the kids did. But all I’m saying is to go above and beyond and to serve. But at the same time, he was able to freely be himself. I could be myself. You’ve got to let each other be. What advice do you have for the couples right now who are listening who have decided to go below and under? They’re in a negative cycle, man. Hey, here’s the biggest thing. Quit keeping score. Quit keeping score on your spouse. How many times have they done this and then how many times have I done that? So what happens is that when I’m in a pattern of doing the wrong thing, then I want to keep score on how many times my spouse has done it so I can come back and say, well, listen, last month you did this and this and this, so you’ve got to forgive me of what I did. Well, now you just sound like you’re fighting. So quit keeping score. I mean, and that’s what we’re going to get to in this next point that we talk about. But that’s the biggest thing is don’t keep score of what’s going on in your life and in your marriage. Quit trying to play the game and just be a couple and love each other. I got to tell you, I wasn’t really totally keeping score, but what I noticed was that you didn’t make dinner for me, and so I volunteered to be in a bowling league every night for the next month. I’m just saying. Bowling thing. Yeah, I’m just totally… I joke about this because I seriously, years ago I was working with a business coaching client and their marriage was just in the absolute toilet. And you hate it because you’re in business, you’re just trying to help them grow their business. But they would come in and it’s like, yeah, how are you Clay? And I’m like, I’m doing good. How are you guys doing? Well, I tell you what, I swear, she’s going to be late because she’s always late. You know what I’m saying? And so, you know, and you’re just like, you’re always, you just hear these subtle attacks of each other and you’re like, I’m just a business coach. I don’t know anything about marriage. And so Pastor Kelly, for people who want to know more about how to get their marriage into the right position, and maybe they want to know more beyond this show, how can they find out more about your church, my friend? Well, you can go on our website, TulsaFaith.com. It’ll give you kind of a rundown of what our church is. And just stop by some Sunday morning at 1030. And we’re going to be doing a series here coming up in January. We’re going to be doing a series and dedicating the whole month to marriage. So you can make plans that come by during that time. That’d be great. And Thrivers, if you want to dedicate this month, this month of December, and make it a month to remember. If you want to say, I love you, what better way to say I love you than with a gift of baked beans? You want to go to Oklahoma Joes and get those world’s best baked beans. You get into that store, you get those burnt ends, you get that meat. Maybe she’s organic, maybe she doesn’t like meat, but if you buy her enough meat from Oklahoma Joes, over time she may turn into a non-vegan. You want to go to Oklahoma Joe’s to check it out there folks and all sincerity that this is the thrive time show And you don’t want to go away. Can we come back? We are going to be getting to the end of the next marriage observation It’s a game-changer. You do not want to miss out stay tuned All right thrive nation and Oklahoma’s green country. Welcome back to the thrive time show where we’re broadcasting within the box that rocks Which is located within the friendly confines of the thrive 15 comm world headquarters, which is located in Oklahoma, which is located in the center of the universe, which is located in the middle of the galaxy, which is located now on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here to teach you how to grow a successful business. But occasionally we call a timeout because you, the Thrive community, you deserve a holistic approach. And many of you have reached out and said, I want to know how to have a successful marriage. And I understand. I’ve been doing my Google search. I’ve looked at your disgusting face and I know that you’re not a beautiful man. And I’ve discovered that your wife is a beautiful lady and I don’t get it. It makes no sense. It’s not possible. How is it possible? You’re still married for 15 years. And so I decided to bring the queen on the show. It’s my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. How are you? Great. That was a grand introduction. The Queen. Thank you. How long have you been totally blind? I was going to say, how long have I been the Queen? Wow. Now we also have someone on the show today who, I tell you what, if you’re on Facebook Live right now, you’ll be blinded by the beauty of this man. This is Pastor Kelly Goins. He’s the pastor of Faith Church. Sir, how are you? I’m doing great. I’m doing great. I am honored to be here between two celebrities. Now we’re talking today about something that is super exciting, and for me I mean this sincerely, we’re talking about the seven observations for creating a great marriage. And you’ve been counseling couples for years. Oh yeah. Have you seen some predictable, I mean you’ve seen the couple that come in for marriage counseling and he is totally checked out. Have you seen that deal? Oh yeah. He comes in. I’ve seen the crocodile tears and people trying to cry and create tears and they not come out. I’ve seen everything. So guys, tell me, how’s the thing going? Marriage is fine. Everything is perfect. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. You’ve seen that, right? I have. I’ve seen some good ones too. I had one couple that I counseled, pre-marital counseling, and got them all ready and they went off for the honeymoon and when they got back, this is a great one, when they got back I got the guy aside and I said, so man, how did everything go on the honeymoon? And he said, well, all I can say is that I’m glad there wasn’t sprinklers in that room because we had to set them off. Oh, wow. That’s what great marriage counseling is all about right there. Now here’s the deal. We’re talking about your observations from your career. You’ve seen some things that have happened and one of the observations run observation number six is so what’s the biblical view of? Marriage now real quick a fun fact. I want to insert here Because we have half the listeners here are listening are going I don’t believe in God at all and the other half say I do Believe in God, okay, so here’s where I’m gonna say just get my unbiased fun fact from USA Today 59% of Americans believe in hell 59% but I’m gonna tell you this I believe that everybody listening right now you believe in having a great marriage and there are Principles in the Bible that are universal principles that when applied have been shown to consistently to be effective Sure now we are people of faith my wife and I and pastor Goins But pastor Goins couldn’t educate us on what’s the biblical view of marriage? Well I think probably when you’re in a church or in a counseling situation and they start talking about marriage, eventually they’re going to go to this scripture in Ephesians the fifth chapter. And this is the famous scripture that says wives submit yourself to your husband. Yeah. You know it’s split denominations and caused lots of problems. I even had, I did a wedding one time over here at Tarp Chapel and I went back to see the bride. That’s where we got married by the way. Is it really? Yeah I had to put them in there. Maybe it was you guys. No, I went back to see the bride before the ceremony. She said, okay, listen, you’re going to read that scripture, but don’t read that part about submit yourself to your husband. She’s all prepared. Don’t, I don’t want you to read that. I said, okay, you know, you’re paying for it. Fine. So I go back to get with the groom and pray with him. And he says, no, listen, one thing I want to make sure that you read is that. What do I do? You know, I want you to read the pots about this. I mean, like an emergency premarital counseling right there. Yeah, I knew him longer than I knew her. So I put it in. It made her mad. You know, I spent their honeymoon in different locations, but that wasn’t my fault. Well, they wow. But anyway, but this this one scripture is kind of the scripture that everybody goes to. But but here’s the thing. And this is I’ll get into a little bit of Bible study here. Here we go. Bibles, most Bibles. And you can see the Bible that I have if you’re looking on the Facebook Live, yeah. They’ll have little headings above different sections. And in my Bible here specifically, that heading starts at verse number 22. And here’s what it says, wives submit yourselves to your husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, and then it goes on from there. Actually what they’re doing now is that some translations are scooting that up just one verse because if you scoot it up to verse number 21 heading and this is yes the heading and this is Ephesians the fifth chapter the 21st verse this is where the pause lies and this is what you need to read into it because this one verse sets everything else and it says this submit to one another out of reverence for Christ now why is that so important for this whole thing because when we get into these verses that say, wives, submit yourselves to your husbands and husbands love your wives. The overriding verse in this is this one thing, submit yourselves to one another. And that’s a huge verse right there, but the next part is even bigger, out of reverence to Christ. So what we do is that we say, okay, because Christ has done so much for me and because I love him so much, because I am so committed to him, that I take all of that love and gratitude and praise and worship that I have in my life and I pour it into my spouse solely and completely out of reverence to Christ. I’m going to honor them. And you know what I think is so amazing about that? When you do that out of reverence for Christ, He in turn will work in your marriage. And I mean, do things to each other’s hearts. Okay, we have someone listening right now who’s going, Hocus Pocus, all this discussion of Jesus and all this stuff. What if I don’t believe in Jesus? Why should I submit to my wife, who by the way, owes me? Okay, so that’s what I want to say. It’s just like I said earlier, how we were talking about the desire to serve a spouse, and then they in turn serve you and that works great when you’re serving them and they’re serving you And you’re serving them and there and it keeps going on but it will always fail But becomes then one person serving and serving and serving and the other is just taking and taking and taking That’s why it has to be mutual submission, right? If you pray to Allah if you pray to Jesus if you pray to whoever it is the principle right there if you pray to Jesus though he will also be working in your marriage. And that’s what is the, I don’t know, the special song. I love the Jesus. Here’s the thing. A lot of people want to say, well, the Bible wants to control me. God wants to control me. So I’ve got all these rules in the Bible that he wants me to do. I don’t want to do them. Here’s the thing, because God created us and you can interpret God, however you want to interpret God, because God created us. The Bible is a textbook that helps us live life. It’s not that he wants to control us, but he knows who we are and he’s giving us instructions about how we can live our life the best. Okay, throw the Bible out of it. If you do nothing more but invest in your spouse, that’s all you do, your one intention is to make them happy, is to please them, is to make sure that they are taken care of, and they do the same to you, then what’s going to happen is you are going to have an incredibly successful marriage whether you use the Word of God or not. Now that happens to be in the Word of God, but that is where we learn this. But if you’ll take that principle on your own, you will have a successful marriage. If you’ve perked my interest a little bit, you peaked my interest. I’m kind of, I’m feeling a good, okay I want to know more about marriage, how to have a great marriage. How can I find out more during the month of January at your church? Okay we’re doing a series on marriage called Passion during the month of January and we want you to come every Sunday. My wife and I will be teaching and talking about marriage. We’ve been married for 25 years. We’ve got four kids of our own. And we’ve got a very successful marriage and we want to share with you that to help you have the greatest marriage you possibly can. Now Thrivers, if you’re listening today for the first time and you’re going, is this always a show about marriage? You know, it’s a show about how to have a successful life, how to grow a successful business. It’s, it’s, we typically talk about business without business school without the BS But today we’re talking about how to have a successful life and how to have a successful marriage. We come back We have another observation from the pastor. All right Thrive Nation. Welcome back to Tulsa’s only local business show where we talk about business school without the BS and Occasionally occasionally what will happen is we will talk about how to have a successful marriage We’ll talk about these things that don’t relate to a business necessarily. The Thrive Time Show, we’re committed to helping you have a successful life. Today specifically we have an incredible guest on the show. We have two guests on the show today. I’m excited about it because I know there are many people listening who are going, it is true, I want to have a successful business. It is true that I have a successful business, but my marriage, I mean under the hood, my car looks good, your car looks good, your business car, your business vehicle, that looks good, but under the hood it ain’t so good. You’re under the hood, you’re going, oh no, this is not good. You look happy, you’re a happy McHapperson, you’re just running around just looking great, you’re winning a business award, you’re having success, but under the hood things aren’t so good. If that’s you, and you’re in your car right now with your significant other, or you’re at work, just look ahead and smile, and no one will know. But here’s the thing, we’re talking to you specifically. We want to help you take your marriage to the next level. So I brought on my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark, and we brought on a pastor, Pastor Kelly Goins. And Pastor Kelly, we’re talking today about the seven observations that you’ve had from a career in ministry about how to have a great marriage and this observation number seven It’s called the leash What are we talking about unleash the leash? well the the principle that we just talked about just before kind of flows into this because it was talking about putting God in the center of our marriage and Putting our spouses as the sole recipient of our love now the pushback from that is that people say well, hang on. You don’t know what my husband’s like. You don’t know what my wife is like. If I give her a little bit before you know it, if I compliment her just a little bit before you know it, she’s way out there spending money and doing all kinds of stuff. With my husband, if I tell him that he’s done something good before you know it, he’s laying around watching TV and drinking beer. The other night I complimented her one time. I come home and all of a sudden she’s got a new Coach handbag. She got a new Louis Vuitton. All that stuff. She’s on the Facebook talking about all the new iPads she’s buying. I don’t even know. It’s just you can’t even say something nice to women anymore, Pastor Kelly. Well, and that’s the way a lot of marriages are. You know, I’ll give you a little bit more leash and then I’ll see how you do with that. And if you, I’ll give you a budget. I know, I know guys that give their wives budgets. You know, you can only spend, not me, but I know these wives. I can only, you can only spend this much money and if it’s over that, you’ve got to come and ask me permission. And if you do go with that, I’ll give you a little bit more. And we do that in our marriage and we leashed that out thinking that I can’t trust them and I always have to guard that. I have to hold them on to lease. But the thing is, is that what happens is that you’re not, that’s not a marriage, that’s parenting. And so you’re not married to someone, you’re wanting to be their mom, you’re wanting to be their dad, you’re still wanting to control this. And I think what is so vital, what you said earlier about putting God at the center, when we are submitting out of reverence to God, that’s when the magic happens because He will go, it comes back to this verse, you know, vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. I know we’re not talking about vengeance here, but you know, there’s been maybe things where I was hurt with a friendship or whatever. And I said, you know what, Lord, I’m just going to take my hands off. I’m going to forgive because you have forgiven me. God always deals with that person way far better than I ever could. And I feel like when we take our hands off our spouse and we say, you know, we’re going to submit out of love for Jesus and we serve our spouse. God does such a work in there that it’s like it’s magic. I don’t know how to explain it. For somebody who’s listening who says, I will let the Lord do his work after I chastise her publicly. After I totally have my vengeance, I’ll let the Lord have his vengeance. But first I want to have my vengeance. For somebody out there who’s really doing the points system right now, they’re trying to get even with their spouse, they’re playing these games, what advice would you have for them? It just goes along with what we’ve just been talking about. You have to come to the point where you throw the leash down. You know the box that we talked about in the very first segment with all of our expectations and the things that we want in marriage? Turn it over. Get rid of all your expectations. Cash it all in. Be completely and 100% in love with that person and give them your heart and accept that it’s out of your control. You cannot change them. They cannot change you and stop fighting that. You be the best you can be. They’ll be the best they can be. And you know what? God will do the rest of you. Give it to him and let him do it. But take your hands off like you said. There is no guarantee that when you turn it all over that that spouse will turn around. There’s no guarantee to do that. But here’s the thing. I like to go with you because I’m like, just give it time and keep going to God. Every single prayer I have ever given to God, He has never let me down on. It might not have happened in my timing or how I thought it would, but if I stayed on Him. But if I kept praying and saying, Jesus, I give this to you. I know He’s so… I have a fun fact. Pastor Goins, you had an observation. Here’s what love is. Love is me giving everything to my wife without the expectation of her giving it back to me. I never completely know, but love is all the risk because here’s the thing. At one point, Christ decided to die on a cross and sacrifice everything to give me the choice at some point to serve him. There was no guarantees that I would. There was no guarantees that I would ever or you would ever decide to do that, but he cast it all in, he turned it all over to give us that choice and that option. So if he is willing to do that for me, then I am willing to do that for my spouse. I have a business fact for you guys, a fun business fact. It’s a business school without the BS. Here’s a fun business fact. If you want to keep half of your money, you don’t want to get a divorce. And so this is just a fun fact about Elon Musk. He’s a billionaire, but the guy got divorced to the same woman twice. So he’s the guy who started PayPal, he started SpaceX, he started Tesla. He gets married, then he gets a divorce, so then he gets remarried about a year and a half later, and again he gets divorced. So I’m just telling you, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now and you want to keep half that money for just a year, all I care about is business. All I care about is business. You want to have a great marriage, and then you might just mess up and have a great life. So Thrivers, when we come back, we’re going to do a recap of these seven observations. And Pastor Kelly’s going to tell us about a great sermon series he has coming up next month. All right Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show, the place that you should go to learn how to start or grow a successful business. I’m laughing because off air, we have on the show today, we have this unbelievable chemistry. I’m telling you, we have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have Pastor Goins on the show and things are always flowing when we have on Pastor Kelly Goins. We have on my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark. And off the air, they’re ragging me because here’s the deal. This is the time of the year. Every time the weather changes at all, I immediately get this allergy deal. But you know, if you listen, if you know me, you know that I’m like the Brett Favre of business. I do not take sick days. So a couple of years ago, I totally tore ligaments in my ankle. My wife remembers my foot will swell up to the size of an elephant foot. I just kept coming to work. And you know what I do? Anytime I’m having any type of pain at all, I take DayQuilt. My wife is going, ah, there’s a warning on there that says, what was the warning you were saying? There was something you took the other day. I get worried about you. I’m your wife. And you’re like, you know how I am with chemicals. What’s the alcohol content in that? And the thing you took the other day, those effervescent pills that said beware about excessive like stomach bleeding so oh my god drinking candy I’m not really candy I’m just trying to stay my drivers might know I can’t be alive this is how the show would be if I didn’t do this this is the sacrifices I make for you to listen to this that would sound I think hello welcome to the thrive type of show I mean you wouldn’t want to listen to that now you don’t have like a nasal buffet on the show appreciate you taking your stuff they appreciate it and we’re just watching you try it. Guys, listen to this. I’m 36 and if I make it to 38, I’m doing great. That’s all I’m saying. I’m just trying to make it two more years. I’m going to drop the mic, hop into the little box, go into the ground, go see the good Lord. Which is probably right on the pastor here. If things end too early. No, I’m going to be juicing him up, feeding him the beets, the carrots, the ginger. He’s getting all that. You’re living, you’ve got to at least go to 80. I’m just saying if it’s my time and I had to die, I would want to die in this box that rocks with you, my incredible wife. The pastor’s right here. He could go. Yes, I could marry you. Give me my last 20 years. Sam, the man’s here. Andrew, the super producer, they’re all in the house. Now we’re talking today about how to have a great marriage. And I’m telling you what, Pastor Goins has been, how long have you been in ministry, my friend? I’ve been in ministry about 38 years. So I’m going to give you, we’re going to go through a recap of your seven observations for creating a great marriage. Got it. We’re going to go kind of like the speed round, okay? So we’re looking for a quick summary of each one of these observations. Okay. Observation number one, understand the difference between desires versus expectations. Go. At some point between the marriage and the time you get home from your honeymoon, your expectations and your desires collide and what you expect in something is there actually what’s coming out of it and you’ve got to figure out how am I going to compromise that and how am I going to fix that. Well, I’ll tell you what Thrivers, if you want to know how to fix that, you want to take your marriage to the next level, how can they learn more about you? Well, hey, you could come. We’re getting ready to do a series in the month of January. Every Sunday in the month of January we’re doing a series on marriage. And come because you’ll get some great practical wisdom about how to make your marriage the very best it can. We’re Faith Church. We’re located at 81st and Memorial, the northeast corner right next to Quick Trip. And big sign that says Faith Church. We’d love to have you guys come. And if you can’t make it out to his service, about 2 o’clock on Sundays, I have a little group I get together. We get together at Quick Trip right next to your church there at 81st and Memorial. And it’s called How to Trick a Mega Hot Wife into Staying Married to You for 15 Years. And we serve free taquitos. Oh, that’s the secret. That’s what it is. If you seriously want to learn how to take your marriage to the next level, what time does your church service start on Sunday? 1030. 1030 and we’ll be out by 2. I promise. Yeah, so you’re out by 2 o’clock. You can get over to my, it’s like a, it’s kind of a campfire series. We usually will get kind of a campfire going on there. They have that area where you can get the free, you can air up your tires for free. We’re out hanging out right there. There’s a lot of hot air there, is that what you’re saying? We’re out there and I’m just like, guys, what is this? Will there be NyQuil there? Or DayQuil? You can’t do the NyQuil. There are three ways to trick your mega hot wife into staying married. Let’s go get some taquitos. So, observation number two, what is that? Observation number two is your desires become expectations. Your desires become expectations. At some point, you’ve got to come to that realization of how am I going to work this thing out? How am I going to be the husband and the wife that I need to be? And those things have to collide and you’ve got to figure out how to do that. So then we talk about the three pitfalls. Now here let me tell you this, Survivors. If you want to become the husband and wife you want to be, that’s a different show. This is not a transgender show. No, and he’s not advocating that. Some of you are getting confused. Some of you are listening and you’re going, did he just advocate becoming the husband and wife I’m supposed to be? No, no, that’s not what he meant there. That’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not the kind of church he has there. Now principle number three, okay, observation number three. Now this is more of a pitfall. This is something you don’t want to do. You don’t want to come to my campfire events at two o’clock at Quick Trip after his church and in the pitfall number three here is, what is that my friend? That’s a conqueror marriage. That’s the marriage that I have conquered my spouse and I’ve won I’ve beat them into submission now They’re the person I want them to be but the problem is is that you may have won the battle But you lost the war because intimacy and love goes out the window now that person is just performing for you at your beck and call And you’re gonna be living in a van down by the river by yourself Sleeping on the couch not good now. We’re moving on here This is observation number four from a man who has been doing marriage counseling for more years than many of you have been alive. This is observation number four. Compromise marriage. What’s that? That’s the compromise marriage. That’s when we decide we are going to live separate lives and that’s the only way we can get together. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. I’ll spend time with my friends, you spend time with your friends and it’s like two ships passing in the night. You never come together. It’s almost like they gave up on trying to be together. Sure. I’m going to be stuck in this marriage because we got kids. We got to stay together. And we got this shared car. We signed up for the bowling league together and we got this auto charge and we can’t get out of it. And we got to finish the league together before we go our separate ways. You know, basically. All right. So we’re moving on here to observation number five. It’s observation number five. Now. Now, Pastor, Pastor Goins, observation number five. Talk to me about this observation. Why does this debtor marriage, this debt debtor marriage thing does not work. Well it doesn’t work because again, it’s a you owe me. I mean it’s a guilt trip. You owe me because I’ve done all this for you. I take care of the house. I take care of the kids. You owe me money. Or the husband comes home and says I work and I do all this kind of stuff. You owe me affection and love. And so it becomes a debt debtor marriage where again I conquer you. I own you, and we keep score of what everyone’s doing, and it’s not a successful marriage. Now, I’m telling you this, Thrivers, if you’re listening right now and you’re going, man, this is getting good here. This is just starting to get… I like the way they’re mixing it up like this. We’re getting to this next one. This one’s pretty hot. This is an intense one here. This is one, you want to maybe write this down here. Okay, so this is observation number six. So what’s the biblical view of marriage, my friend? What is it? So it is Ephesians, the fifth chapter, 21st verse, where it says, Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. So the concept is that I take all the love and affection and fidelity and gratitude that I have for Christ because of his life change in my life, because he forgave me my sins and gave me a new start. And I take all that affection and I dump it into one person and that one person is my spouse. And when I have one single priority and that’s loving her, loving him, loving that spouse, if I have that one single obligation of putting all my love to them, then that’s when marriage stops becoming about me and starts becoming about we. Now we’re moving on to observation number seven. Observation number seven, this is from a man who knows how to get directly to heaven. It’s pastor going to the leash in this last one is the leash. And that’s just when you get pushed back with this. Well, now if I give her all of that, then pretty soon she’s going to take advantage of if I put all my love into her, then she’s never going to give any of it back to me. And that’s a leash that that we’re, we’ve got our spouse on a leash and we divvy a little bit more of it out. And that’s not marriage, that’s parenting. And so the thing is with that is that you have to let go of the leash. You’ve got to throw your love down. You have to throw your life down. You’ve got to empty the box. You’ve got to give them everything and trust that it is going to work and that God is going to work out this marriage in a good way. Now Thrivers, if you’re listening right now today, you have three options that you can take here. You have three options that you can take. Okay, there’s just three moves, three, sort of like a fork in the road, but it’s like a super fork. You’ve got three different options you can take here. One is you can listen to today’s program and you can do nothing. You can just go, that was something. I mean, it was something. It was something I enjoyed various aspects of the show. It educated me. I don’t want to do anything with it, but it was something I could do that I could listen to, like a TED Talks basically. The pastor goes, they want to get involved in your church or learn more about taking their marriage to the next level. What can they do? Well, we’ve got a great church and all the month of January we’re going to be doing a sermon series on Sunday mornings at 1030 just dealing specifically with marriage and relationships. So you can come and sit, have a great cup of coffee, enjoy some great music. Where are you located and what’s the name of your church again? Faith Church 81st and Memorial. We’re on the northeast corner right next to quit trip, and we would love to have you come by all Sundays at 1030 And thrivers and thrivers or you can do the option number two you can go to thrive 15.com It’s the world’s best business school the world’s best online business coaching platform and for 19 bucks a month You can learn everything you’ve ever wanted to know about how to have success in The world of business and because we have generous investors We have a scholarship program that makes it affordable for anybody. So literally, if you’re going, if I have $1 a month, I can do it? Yeah, you can set your own price. I can set my own price? You can set your own price. Or option three, you can book a thrive15.com interactive business workshop, or one-on-one mentorship. A workshop or one-on-one mentorship. It’s all available for you. Those are your three options. And I’m gonna tell you what, Thrivers, we care enough about you and we care so much that we ask you to share. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com, go to Thrivetimeshow.com, click on today’s archived radio show, aka podcast, share with a friend or family member, and help them improve their life by 2% or 4%. And on tomorrow’s show, you’re not going to want to miss out because tomorrow’s show is one of those shows you’re going to want to mark the calendar for. It’s a game changer. And I’m just telling you what tomorrow’s show is going to help you take your business game to the next level. JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s it’s T-Bo time and Tulsa, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5 and 6 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the two day interactive thrive time show business growth workshop Yes, folks put it in your calendar this December the month of Christmas December 5th and 6th Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the thrive time show two day interactive business growth workshop We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences in 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive, it’s two days, it’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s gonna blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup but I encourage everybody out there today get those tickets today, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? How does it work? You just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the Request Tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it, and I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Tong, and I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show in Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You. You’re going to come. Who? I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re gonna give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Jerusalem. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, over the last 35 years, 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful, sunny weather of L.A., come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it, and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops Because we teach you what you need to know to grow You can learn the proven 13-point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies We get into the specifics the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re gonna leave energized, motivated, but you’re also gonna leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. As Mr. Clay Clark, he’s a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump, but we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who’s my age, and I can say or cannot say? Well, I have to, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV. He said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? I said, no. My father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, Watch what a person does, not what they say.